People

Have you ever been in a large meeting where at least one of those speaking is wearing a wireless lavaliere microphone? Sometimes that person will neglect to turn off the microphone, resulting in all kinds of embarrassing or distracting sounds echoing through the meeting room. The solution to this little problem is, of course, to always check to be sure the microphone is turned off except when it’s needed.

Life, on the other hand, doesn’t come with an off switch. Seth Godin offers a vivid illustration of this point on his blog, as he reminds us that we are always marketing, even when we think we’re not.

My thanks to Stu Gray and Joe Szymanski for leading me to this post through links on their blogs.

And yes, it’s a cliché to say that we should be thankful all year, but it’s true. A grateful heart is a joyful heart. My friend Dave Courvoisier offers some valuable insights about giving thanks that are well worth practicing all year round. Thank you, Dave, for writing such an excellent blog. And for helping me remember that it’s not enough to just be thankful. We need to express that gratitude in tangible ways.

In fact, sometimes you need to say “no” to a prospective client. Samuel Ryan offers these 10 Reasons to Say No on his site Wake Up Later. While this list is aimed as web writers and developers, much of the information is valuable for us in the voiceover world as well.

My thanks to DB Cooper for posting this link on the VO-BB.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “mind-boggling” at one time or another. This weekend (as I’m typing this I’ve just moments ago walked through the door back in Charlotte after flying home from New York this evening) has given me a new appreciation for this term. For my mind is well and truly boggled.

I think it will likely be weeks before I entirely get my head around all that I’ve learned. I used my Treo 680 and typed notes as fast as my thumbs would allow (and sometimes faster!) at all of the great coaching, ideas and thoughts Marice Tobias shared. A month ago, when I took my previous workshop with Marice on commercials and narration, I thought I understood mind-boggling, but this weekend has topped that experience.

Today was the promo part of the promo/trailer workshop. We worked on several pieces of copy, taking different approaches to each piece. Each of these approaches helped us understand how best to deliver the copy as ourselves. This is so counter-intuitive. After all, who else can I bring into the studio with me? Just me. My natural human tendency is to want to adapt myself to the copy, rather than finding the best way to present the copy as me.

Here’s one other inescapable conclusion I’ve reached regarding all that I learned, there’s no way to really understand how to put into practice what Marice teaches unless you are able to take the workshops with her. The experience is too tightly woven into the fabric of the entire experience.

One last note to this post before I go collapse for a few hours. With us was Stacey Stahl, owner of In Both Ears. What a fantastic experience it was last night at dinner to sit across from Stacey and learn many valuable insights about how voiceover agents like to be treated and (more importantly) don’t like to be treated by voice talent. Eye-opening and more than a little mind-boggling in its own right.

I’ve written before about a life-changing experience I had in Nashville in the early 90s when I attended a workshop with Marice Tobias. This weekend has been another such experience, and no surprise, it’s again involved the amazing Marice Tobias.

I’m in my hotel room in Manhattan as I type this, still trying to get my head around all that I learned today at day one of a Promo/Trailer workshop this weekend at the Sound Hound in West 45th Street. Today’s study was on movie trailers. And the one thing that stood out to me more than anything else was that everyone in the room brought their A game to this thing. Which meant that we all made ourselves better, as we listened to one another, heard the coaching and direction being given by Marice to one another, and encouraged one another. I literally cannot describe what it was like in more detail. I don’t have the words. But, I know that I’m going to go home to Charlotte tomorrow evening a different, a better, voiceover talent that when I came.

Tomorrow is the promo focus. I’ll write more when I can, but if it’s anything like today, I doubt I’ll be able to put those experiences into words either.

I don’t know if you’ve been following the saga of the Writers Guild strike or not. Depending on where you live and what sort of work you do, your interest may be very high or you might not even be aware there’s a strike taking place.

Whatever your level of interest, I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to read the open letter from David Lawrence published at Vox Daily today. David has taken a significant risk to express himself. You need to read it all.

My thanks to Bobbin Beam for posting the link that led me to this article today.

Thanks to Stu Gray’s blog (and a hat tip to Stephanie Ciccarelli for helping me find this post) I’ve just run across a terrific bit of advice about making connections with people from the RainToday blog.

The key point is this: when you first meet someone, if you don’t start a conversation with him or her in the first few seconds, it’s much harder to do so later.